Don’t go to sleep

We cannot live our lives in fear – but it’s becoming quite apparent these tragedies can occur anytime, any place – to us!”

CORNER COLUMN | BY DORIS NEWMAN

I cried over my breakfast again this morning. Before I had sat down at the kitchen table to my bowl of cereal I had clicked on the television to catch up on the weather and the day’s news. CBS News announced that most of the people who had died in the church shooting in Sutherland Springs had been identified. If nothing else rocks your world when mass shootings are being reported, it seems like on an ever-increasingly frequent basis, when the statistics start becoming people is when the realization pierces your heart. Hearing that a pregnant mother and her child were cut down was what caused the tears to fall over my breakfast.

These days, at least at times, our world seems to be a darker, colder place. I just read a scripture the other day pertaining to the danger in the world. It’s 1 Peter 5:88 that says “the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour.” Part of being an adult is learning the need for “street smarts” that can range from anything from learning to look both ways before crossing the street to not walking down a dark alley. Then there are dangers of other sorts - random crazy things like, well… we all read about them and see them on the evening news every day.

But being shot down while in prayer is completely out of one’s realm of expectations. But again, it has happened before and heaven forbid, but it is possible it could happen again. Even the sound of balloons accidentally poppin makes people jump and think of the unexpected these days.

So on that Sunday I wasn’t in church. I was camping and wearing my tee shirt from Daniel Springs Youth Camp that says simply in about 140-point font, Do Something. It is meant to launch people into action in bringing souls to God. But it could also apply to this enormous problem infesting our country.

But what to do? This is not an article for or against gun control. It is not meant to probe into the human psyche to determine what makes a person a killer. It is one single person’s opinion and I do see some needs.

One is to look and listen. Gather facts and genuinely examine the situation. What happened? How? Please be sure to check that the facts you get are from a credible source. Looking legitimate and being legitimate can be two different things. And when you gain your knowledge, don’t go to sleep on this.

Sometimes it could be something as simple as a family member or friend stepping up and reporting something troubling to authorities or taking some uncomfortable action to get someone help. Maybe it will be a matter of tightening the loopholes with background checks for people to obtain guns – legally, at least.

Please don’t let what always happens happen again. We cannot live our lives in fear – but it’s becoming quite apparent these tragedies can occur anytime, any place – to us!

Pay attention to this one, if not to others before, and exercise your voice to your elected officials to do whatever is in the power of our government to stop these tragedies. We have got to be open to doing any and everything we possibly can to try to stop more of these things from happening again. Isn’t what’s in the balance worth it? It isn’t a party, it isn’t a lobby that we should be protecting. It is quite simply our own or our loved ones’ lives that could be at stake.